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Station / Estación # 98: Popotla

A Sunday afternoon zoom up the blue line placed me in Popotla with a warm springtime sun beating down.

The logo of the station is an Ahuehuete tree. You can read about the significance of this tree to the area in the wikipedia Metro Popotla article.

As a side note, El Árbol de Tule (The tree of Tule), also an Ahuehuete, in the small town Tule in the Mexican state of Oaxaca has the widest trunk of any tree in the world.

Anyway, after disembarking I was injected with another routine dose of Mexico City street art – placating, pacifying and staving off any possible impending jitteriness of withdrawal.

Sacks of citrus pith and rind, the inevitable consequences of that other great soother – a refreshing and pulpy glass of vitamin C.

An open air train line runs through the precinct. Methinks a relic of yesteryear, I didn’t see any locomotives rattling down the parallels of steel.

A Sunday afternoon game of basketball seems as good a way as any to whittle away the hours.

Once upon a time this project was regularly fuelled by OXXO coffee, at Bondojito for instance. I would stop anywhere and everywhere for a steaming cup. Thirteen pesos of pure dark joy.

I’ve since moved onto Arizona Iced Tea and I don’t mind giving them a plug – a regular refresher, quality quencher.

Today, however, I reverted to the former and it was while I drank, taking a reflective break that one of the English speakers that pepper the streets of Mexico City (I wrote about them in the San Lazaro post) wandered past. He about turned and quick-fired verbatim ‘Hey! Are you a white boy?’, approached and uttered ‘eres gringo?’

Yes and no I concluded and that was the start of our chatter which led onto a tiger-backed photo shoot.

From there it was on to stare deeply into the eyes of a pink ostrich seeking counsel. He advised me to call it a day.